Kaaterskill Falls

The present work by Robert Havell, Jr. captures the delights available for tourists visiting Catskill Mountain House and surrounding natural attractions, such as Kaaterskill Falls, beginning in the early nineteenth century. David Schuyler describes that a "hiking trail and carriage drive led around North and South lakes to Kaaterskill Creek and followed the watercourse to the top of Kaaterskill Falls, where there was a refreshment pavilion and a wooden stairway that led visitors to the clove below...The refreshment pavilion at the top of Kaaterskill Falls had been constructed as early as 1824. A sawmill that produced the lumber used in building the Catskill Mountain House impounded the once-free-flowing Kaaterskill Creek...the operator of the sawmill would, for a fee, open the dam and allow the waters of Kaaterskill Creek to rush over the falls. When visitors arrived at the base of the falls the manager of the refreshment pavilion would lower a picnic basket and, if the tourists paid for it, a bottle of champagne." (Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909, Ithaca, New York, 2012, p. 22)